This email I just received is easily the best (read: most hilarious) phishing email I’ve seen this month.

To: [an email I've never used on eBay]
From: “Support” <support@ebaysupport.com>
Subject: Messge from eBay -

Dear eBay Member,
This is your official notification from eBay. Your online has expired.
If you want to continue using our service you have to renew your online.
If not, your online will be limited and deleted.
To confirm your Account records click on the following link:

http://signin.ebay.com.ws.ebayisapi.eby89587y.com/ebay/eBayISAPI/ws/eBayISAPI.htm

Thank you,
Scott R. Shipman, CIPP Senior Counsel, Global Privacy Practices eBay Inc.

Oh holy crap, my online has expired?!?

What will I do? Obviously I’d better click the totally legitimate link to ebayisapi.eby89587y.com right away, to make sure my online is not limited, or worse… deleted!

Wow, thanks so much Scott R. Shipman, you really saved me from what could have been a downright terrible day.

Crisis averted.

1 Comment | post permalink

As you may have noticed, being the astute reader that you no doubt are, The Naked Loon has been on an abbreviated news schedule For the last few weeks.

The reasons for this are threefold (in order of importance):

1. There simply is not much happening. No news = no news stories. What can you do.
2. Our staff of highly-trained journalists needed a holiday / snow / sanity / lava lamp break.
3. A coordinated raccoon attack on Naked Loon HQ took out 82.3% of our newsing equipment.

The Naked Loon will return to a more regular posting schedule beginning in January. We can’t promise a full five-day-a-week story schedule, because frankly our reporters have been working this gig since April 1 on zero pay, and even they have limits.

The long and short of it is that while The Naked Loon is most assuredly here to stay, the quantity may be somewhat subdued until and unless some dollars start rolling in our way.

So what are you still sitting there reading this for? Get out there and tell all your friends about The Naked Loon (especially if those friends have deep pockets and a burning desire to financially support the internets’ bestest satire newspaper around—ever).

1 Comment | post permalink

Um, what the heck, people?

According to The Naked Loon’s web tracking software, on Wednesday and Thursday at least 43 people arrived at our recent point-counterpoint by doing a Google News search for “is obama the antichrist”, plus over 150 more that searched for obama antichrist, obama anti christ, obama the antichrist, and many other variations totaling over 200 visitors.

Seriously? People are searching Google News for this? Who are these people? At least one of them left a comment (#1), which gives us at least some clue as to the mindset of the type of individual that would search Google News for Obama’s Antichrist credentials.

This strange turn of events got me wondering… what other types of twisted searches are sending people to The Naked Loon?

Here’s a sampling of a few web searches (news and otherwise) that have landed unsuspecting internet users on The Naked Loon in the last month.

• seattle is awesome – 9 searches
• strip clubs for sale – 9 searches
• pleather gloves – 8 searches
• screaming at children – 7 searches
• christine gregoire nude – 7 searches (oh how I wish I were making that one up)
• darcy burner nude – 5 searches (seriously guys, find another hobby—yikes)
• boeing ferrets – 2 searches

Wow.

6 Comments | post permalink

Anybody remember this story from the Naked Loon’s April 1 launch day? Fun Over for King County Fair

Some choice excerpts:

Following years of waning attendance, organizers of the King County fair have announced that they have completely given up all hope of attracting visitors to the 145-year-old event.
…
“I’m hoping that this will be what puts the fair out of its misery,” said fair manager Sharon Roberts. As the oldest fair in the Western U.S., the King County Fair has outlived its usefulness and really needs to go, Roberts said. Other fair organizers agreed that constantly putting on an event of this magnitude centered on such a mind-numbing subject has become increasingly wearisome throughout the years.
…
Fair attendance has dropped from 64,821 people in 2003 to 33,119 in 2007. Fair officials hope that this move will finally be enough to drop attendance below 10,000, which would justify completely shutting it down once and for all.

Now consider this story from today’s Seattle Times: Sims proposes to shut down King County Fair

The King County Fair survived the Civil War, the Great Depression and two world wars.

But now, because of declining attendance and an ailing county budget, its days may be numbered.

King County Executive Ron Sims has proposed shutting down the 145-year-old Enumclaw event, which bills itself as the oldest county fair west of the Mississippi River.
…
Sims said that for years he resisted suggestions that the fair be closed. But its continuing decline convinced him it was time to pull the plug.
…
From the days when the fair drew 100,000 paying customers and exhibitors, it dwindled to 16,387 this year during its truncated three-day run — even though the county offered free admission.

It’s cute that the Times is reporting this as if it’s actually news. Looks like we scooped them by about… six months.

1 Comment | post permalink

The credit crisis is probably the biggest disaster to strike our nation since we narrowly avoided a deadly bird flu epidemic.  Or was it SARS.  Anyway, the point is that if not for the BIG BOLD HEADLINES and terrifying stories all over the evening news for weeks straight, we surely would have endured massive carnage.

So in the time-honored journalism tradition of relentlessly beating the big scary story of the day with a seemingly unending steam of sensationalist stories, I present CREDIT IN CRISIS: Naked Loon Special Edition.

Consider this your heads up that for the next week or so, most of our stories on The Naked Loon will be focusing on the growing national and international financial crisis, it’s deadly worldwide ramifications, and how its personification will sneak into your home at night and strangle the family dog.

You can trust The Naked Loon to bring you the latest important economy-crushing, credit-destroying, hand-flailing, running-in-circles-screaming news about the credit crisis.

1 Comment | post permalink